ON A WARM DAY IN WINTER.

WHEN some poor heart that lives a-chill and dull,

Frozen long since by hardness and neglect,

Is stirred by gracious pity, dropped upon it

By one whose careless tenderness, half feigned,

Would be aroused by some ill-treated beast,

Or who would sweetly lift a drowning fly

From out his peril, set him in the sun,

And watch him till he flew, - it throbs and burns

And dreams and hopes, till, all in vain, it sees

Its fancied sunrise but a Northern Light

That coldly waves its wondrous lamp aloft

And then departs, leaving more bleak and cold

The still, far-reaching waste.

And so the trees

That bud again for one soft week in fall

Or winter, when the mocking skies grow mild,

Find their hope naught, and must endure again

The snows and winds and frosts that buffet them.

But not so sad their hap, for well they know

That soon the whirling snows will cease, and soon

The eager spring will smile, and all things bloom.

W. T.